This invention relates to clearing by detonating or deflagrating anti-tank and anti-vehicle land mines located on the beach, or beach zone mines; located in the water near the surf line; or surf zone mines configured in mine corridors consisting of several mines or mine belts or individually. The invention allows the rapid clearing of large numbers of mines in an extremely short time or the clearing of mines xe2x80x9cin stridexe2x80x9d by amphibious forces or armored task force elements.
The ability to clear beach zone and surf zone mines in support of amphibious operations allowing landing craft to move ashore to deposit combat forces is an offensive capability having high priority. The projection of power from the sea requires that mines be cleared in the beach zone and surf zone with a high probability of success in multiple landing zones in an extremely short time. Further, the ability to clear land mines by the maneuver elements or armored task forces to prevent the enemy from creating kill zones and channeling friendly forces is a combat capability having high priority for ground forces. The clearing of anti-armor and anti-vehicle mines in a short time, in stride, with a high probability of success is a critically required capability.
While the clearing of land mines is a capability which both amphibious forces and armored task forces currently can accomplish, they cannot accomplish the task without a significant investment in mine clearing equipment, as well as in the time necessary to clear the mines.
Mine clearing concepts currently involve, in the case of armored task forces, vehicle-mounted systems such as mine flails and rollers. These systems are designed to cause the mines to detonate by activating the pressure sensitive fuses on the mines. Mine clearing capability for amphibious forces employs netted systems launched from landing craft or air-cushioned landing craft vehicles where the nets are deployed using rocket propelled deployment systems to overlay the beach area and detonate the mines due to over pressure of shaped charges attached on the net.
Aircraft-delivered systems using fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft have included the use of fuel-air explosives and conventional powder gun projectiles. Fuel-air explosives mixed fuel with the air to obtain a proper air-fuel mixture ratio and detonate the mixture using a timed detonator system to over pressure the area over a minefield and cause the mines to detonate. Gun systems fire 50 caliber gun projectiles designed to detonate mines on impact and incorporating the ability to penetrate both soil and water to allow beach zone and surf zone mines to be cleared.
The use of metal detectors with ground troops to clear mines by hand has been a major approach in the prior art. This approach, because of the time consumed in clearing mines and because of the design of mines with no metal elements, is not in as wide a use as before.
Prior art has focused on fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft vehicle delivered and air-cushioned landing craft and landing craft delivered mine clearing systems. The design approach used by these concepts is one which focuses on exercising the mine fuse system causing the fuse to operate and detonate the mine or have focused on destroying the fuse and fuse well to preclude operation of the mine and render the mine safe. These approaches have not focused on attacking the mine TNT, CompB, or other explosive fills in a concept which deflagrates the mine by causing the fill to go low order as the defeat mechanism. An alternate defeat mechanism would be attacking the mine fill to cause the mine fill to detonate. The reason that these approaches have not been employed is that it is difficult to deflagrate/detonate TNT fills or other fills since they require on the order of 30 kilobars of overpressure to initiate the deflagration/detonation. This usually requires that the mine fuse and fuse well use a detonator and booster charge to apply sufficient pressure to the TNT, or alternate fill, to cause it to detonate. The current invention specifically is designed to cause the mine fill to detonate/deflagrate and allows the clearing of minefields and mine belts in very short time.
Briefly stated, the invention allows a large number of anti-vehicle or antitank mines to be cleared in extremely short time in a concept designed to attack the mine TNT, CompB, or alternate explosive fill and causing it to deflagrate/detonate.
The invention involves a system concept over clearing minefields in stride. The invention involves the delivery, typically, of dispensers containing small munitions. In the air-delivered concept, these munitions are typically six inches in diameter and forty to sixty inches long. The munitions include a guidance section, jet reaction control system, rocket motor, and flechette or dart dispensing system containing high temperature incendiary flechettes or darts. The dart dispensing system would contain and have the ability to dispense 1,000, 0.35-inch diameter, 4-inch long flechettes or darts packaged in five rows of 200 darts each. The air-delivered concept would utilize GPS-guided or GPS-updated inertial guided munitions incorporating jet reaction control or canard and tail control to maneuver the munitions to their aimpoint. While the concept is described as an air-delivered approach, artillery concepts using 5-inch and 155 mm gun projectiles or missile artillery using surface-to-surface guided multiple launch rocket systems or tactical missiles could be employed.
In the air delivery concept, used as an example, multiple tactical munitions dispensers will be delivered by a fixed wing aircraft. Subsequent to delivery of the tactical munitions dispenser, the dispensers would be opened and, typically, five mine clearing munitions would be ejected from each tactical munitions dispenser. Each munition would then guide to an aimpoint utilizing GPS information and maneuver, utilizing the jet reaction control system taught by Mayersak, U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,429, to position the munition in a vertical descent over the minefield utilizing the inverse guidance law taught by Mayersak, U.S. Pat. No. 6,254,031. The jet reaction control system, operating typically at a 25 millisecond rate, would change the force states to control the angle of slide slip in such a way to position the munition over the target in a vertical descent at an aimpoint. At this point, the rocket motor would be ignited. A fluted rocket nozzle would spin the munition to 60 cycle-per-second and accelerate the munition to 2,500 feet-per-second. At this point, a dispensing system would open the anti-mine munition and the 1,000 darts contained in the munition would be dispensed due to high-speed rotation and centrifugal force in such a way that a uniform pattern of darts would impact the ground. The spacing between darts would be designed such that one or more darts would impact a mine located in the dart pattern and, in the case where several mines would be in the pattern, all would be hit one or more times.
The flechettes or darts delivered by the mine clearing munition would be capable of penetrating the soil or water in a cavitating generating mode utilizing a small tungsten nose pin to cause the high velocity dart to create a cavity. In the case of water penetration, the hydrodynamic cavitation or supercavitating penetrating concept, allows the anti-mine flechette or dart to penetrate with just the nose of the dart in contact with the water while the dart creates an envelope around it or a cavity to allow low-drag penetration in the water. The cavitation effect or supercavitating penetration is well known and documented in the literature. The anti-mine dart tungsten nose and high velocity is also designed, however, to create a cavity while penetrating dirt in a terradynamic cavitation concept to allow the dart to penetrate to and defeat mines in soil up to two feet. The terradynamic and hydrodynamic cavity effect allows the dart to incorporate a delayed active ignition system employing an active element such as a primer or blank cartridge to ignite a high temperature incendiary fill contained in the dart. The delayed active ignition system allows the ignition of high temperature fill to occur when the dart impacts the plastic case or steel case of the surface or buried mine and not initiate when the dart impacts the soil or water because of the cavity effect. The active ignition system ignites the high temperature incendiary fill contained in the dart. The fill is a form of specialized rocket propellant such as a metalized ammonium perchlorate or metalized potassium perchlorate having an ignition time on the order of 50 microseconds. As the dart penetrates into the mine, the dart locally fractures the mine TNT or high explosive fill and propagates cracks into the rest of the fill. The fracturing mechanism is the expanding head of the dart due to the delayed active ignition system and kinetic energy of the dart as it penetrates into the mine. The high temperature incendiary fill of the dart ignited by the active ignition system ignites the mine TNT or high explosive fill locally which propagates to a deflagration or detonation of the mine destroying the mine.
Since a large number of anti-mine munitions can be delivered by fixed wing aircraft, the clearing of mines can be accomplished essentially in stride in a short time.